Facebook has made its call on political ads, and it is the same call it made before. On 9 January 2020, the company said it would keep running political advertising without fact-checking it, and instead hand users a few new controls to turn down what they see.
The reasoning, laid out by Rob Leathern, the director of product management, is that the platform should not act as referee. “In the absence of regulation, Facebook and other companies are left to design their own policies,” he wrote, arguing that lawmakers, not the company, should set the rules.
The stance splits Facebook from its rivals. Twitter has decided to ban political ads and Google to narrow their targeting, while Facebook will not touch targeting. By its own data, more than 85% of what American presidential candidates spend on Facebook goes to audiences of more than 250,000 people.
Its policy rests on the principle that “people should be able to hear from those who wish to lead them, warts and all, and that what they say should be scrutinized and debated in public.”
What Facebook did add, under the hood, is transparency. The Ad Library, live since May 2018, now shows a range for how many people a given ad could reach, and users will get a control to see fewer political ads on Facebook and Instagram.
The company also backs the Honest Ads Act and says ads must still follow its Community Standards. “We regularly disallow ads from politicians that break our rules,” Leathern wrote, even as the company declined to judge the truth of the ones it accepts.
Sources
- Expanded Transparency and More Controls for Political Ads
- Facebook Says It’s Cool With Lies in Political Ads for 2020 | Vanity Fair
